Portagers top Sabers, 52-35

By MATT WENZEL, Sports Editor, Manistee News Advocate
Published: Saturday, December 5, 2009

Revolt led all scorers with 15 points and chipped in four rebounds, four steals and three blocks.

“I was feeling good, hopefully I’ll keep going,” she said. “We work really well as a team and I thought we all shot really well.”

Onekama junior Taylor Hagen had 11 points, seven rebounds and two blocks before fouling out midway through the fourth quarter and senior Katie Prielipp had 11 points, five steals and three assists.

“They’ve been doing a good job passing the ball around,” said Onekama coach Nathan Bradford, “and I think one good thing about this team is they don’t really care who scores most of the points.”

Junior Alex Barnett led the Sabers with 10 points to go with six steals and five rebounds and junior Jennifer Alway had nine points and five rebounds.

“You could see some jitters out there,” said MCC coach Todd Erickson. “I had a couple kids that were pretty frozen.”

The Sabers were playing their first game without Ashley Bauman, the school’s all-time leading scorer and 6-foot-1 freshman at Hope College.

“We’re not worried about double-teaming her every time,” Bradford said with a smile. “It makes it a lot easier on everybody.”

Neither team had much success from the field in the first quarter and after Onekama (1-0, 1-0 WMD) built an 11-5 lead, MCC (0-1, 0-1 WMD) used full-court pressure to create turnovers and score the final four points to pull within two.

“The first quarter we had a lot of turnovers and settled down after that,” Bradford said. “I told them we were killing ourselves with turnovers in the beginning, not boxing out and rebounding. After we got that under control, I think we did a good job.”

Onekama's Jaylee Brown (center) tries to race past Manistee Catholic Central's Michalina Hanson (left) and Danielle Edmondson (right) during the second half. (Matt Wenzel/News Advocate)

Onekama opened the second quarter on a 12-4 run to build an eight-point lead before the Sabers chipped away at it late and went into halftime trailing by three points at 24-21.

Both teams shot well early in the third quarter and combined for 17 points in the first three minutes. However, the Portagers closed the quarter strong and took a 41-30 lead into the final eight minutes. The Sabers never got any closer the rest of the way.

Onekama’s Jennica Mathieu finished with eight points, seven rebounds and three steals, Lexi Howard scored four and Jaylee Brown chipped in three.

For MCC, Mimi Modjeski scored six points, Danielle Edmondson had four points, 12 rebounds, six assists and three steals, Brooke Etheridge had four points and Jordan Barnett scored two.

“I’m a little disappointed in some areas, but we’ll work on it,” Erickson said. “We’ll improve, but we have to improve together. We can’t improve as singles and all the kids know that.

“We have a lot of work to do and as I told the kids, ‘it can only go one way and it’s got to be up.’”

The Portagers are hoping their win over MCC is a sign of good things to come, and they’re still looking for wins over Mason County Eastern and Big Rapids Crossroads Charter Academy.

“We have two other teams we want to get at,” Revolt said, “and we just have to keep working hard.”

Onekama J.V. Defeats MCC

The Onekama junior varsity team beat MCC on Friday night, 28-22.

Lindsay Nesburg led the Portagers with 10 points. For MCC, Hannah Janicki had 11 points and 10 rebounds, Stephanie Smogoleski had six points and 15 rebounds and Katie Pachesny had 15 rebounds as well.